


Penance For How I Treated Sam (Written Mid-Season Nine)

by Madeline_Elaine_Dew (lynnotline)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apologies, Essay, Gen, Meta, S09E18 - mentioned, about Sam Winchester, anger over season eight/nine, ranting a little bit, repenting, thoughts on the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3185909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnotline/pseuds/Madeline_Elaine_Dew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A self-indulgent attempt to right the many wrongs I evoked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penance For How I Treated Sam (Written Mid-Season Nine)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I am an extraordinarily emotional person, which generally means that TV shows of any kind, but particularly Supernatural, are preternaturally bad for my health. This essay is a result of a cataclysm of feelings and thoughts and regrets that were going around in my head during season eight and early season nine, and is essentially my coping mechanism of dealing with excess feels (which, apparently, is essays. Sigh). Apologies if it's not your flavor, I try to keep my work impersonal... but this is an essay, and also my therapy, so screw it.

“An even trade?”

This line of Sam’s, from S09E18, really, really, _really_ got me.

Up until this point in the season and the previous one, I had been unimaginably, unequivocally mad at Sam – for not looking for Dean in Purgatory, being distant and unrelenting to Dean, lying to Dean during the Trials, ignoring Dean trying to help, tormenting Dean when Dean let ‘Ezekiel’ possess him, denying Dean’s (admittedly unhealthy) devotion over and over again.

But Sam’s face and voice when he said that. Oh Jesus.

I rethought over everything Sam has been through and his behaviour throughout it all: more than that, I pulled a devastated Dean Winchester and barraged myself for weeks over it all, re-watched a great deal of the series and repented. At the end of it, no longer did I see Sam as the whining boy that couldn’t buck up to what he was and what he needed to be, or the heartless brother. He is a diligent, empathetic fighter (and I am a terrible, terrible person).

When talking to Metatron in this scene he is bargaining for his Castiel’s life… but I also think it could be applied to a lot more than that.

Throughout Sam’s life he has been, put simply, fucked over by a lot of people, a lot of times. Even Dean has kept him in the dark a lot, though Dean and a lot of fans will argue with good cause. The amazing thing is, however, that Sam kinda _sees_ that. He’s pissed off about it, sure, and usually hurt and going through all that woeful stuff that kills us to watch but he _gets_ the argument of the other side: a rare trait indeed.

So when he says, “An even trade?” I feel like Sam is thinking (begging) about _everything_ : John, Ruby, Lilith, Lucifer, Dean, Gadriel, Cas, Gabriel, Anna, Meg, Kevin (I could go on). He doesn’t want revenge; he doesn’t even want an _apology_ , for Christ’s sake: he just wants something to be _fair_. With that quivering, strained voice and terrified eyes, he just wants someone to tell him the truth.

Sam has stayed emotional throughout the whole series, amazingly so, which I think has thrown me off of him a bit because I _like_ Dean. I like his hard eyes and rigid mouth and unwavering sense of righteousness; that good is good and bad is bad and that the Winchesters must stick together, end of story. I like that Dean will throw himself in the line of fire with that same etched-in expression of fury and determination for _everyone_ , not just Sam (although his efforts double and then triple when Sam is thrown into the equation).

And I’m talking _everyone_ : they saved the _world_ , guys, _several_. _freaking. times_. I like that he’s so ready to save everyone that it’s pig-headed and suicidal of him, and I’m continually, whole-heartedly _livid_ that while his martyr attitude is endearing, no one seems to be doing _anything_ to stop Dean from destroying himself.

But I think I, as well as many others, have forgotten how easy it is to harden in the face of such things. That’s _not_ , of course, to say Dean is weak or predictable or becoming what is expected (a hardened warrior, etc.), but simply that Sam has stayed as soft and as hopeful as he was in season one. This is a remarkable feat and, as empathy is far too often, classed incorrectly as weakness, even by those who experience it (witness here the way Sam wanted to do the Trials because he felt _unclean_ , like he wasn’t worthy, like he needed to _prove_ himself).

I think another thing that is easy to forget is that this show is called _Supernatural_ for a reason. They are dealing with the entirely paranormal on a daily basis and while this has become a resigned fact to us, the viewers, an astonishing thing has occurred; a _character_ knows that what goes on every episode is the stuff of old tales, of myths, and he’s pretty goddamn floored by it.

Historically, Sam craves the normal, which I found a bit pansy of him because Christ, fighting monsters with your brother on the road in gorgeous car doesn’t sound too bad to me and so every time he bitched that he didn’t want this life, I bitched right back at him. But what we need to recall is that the things we watch _are_ Sam’s normal; same as we want to watch these crazy monsters and beforehand mythical angels and demons because it’s something _different_ , Sam wants what we have. A stable home, parents, a sane sibling; the opportunity to live a healthy, safe life – and we forget that this is something almost no one has to ask for.

So the fact that Sam keeps going for this idea of having a normal life, and how it’s become litany to us and Dean alike, is actually very similar to the way that we slog through the heartbreak of this series in hopes that the brothers turn out okay. The reason that I was mad at Sam for settling down with Amelia (however briefly) was because I had forgotten that I’ve never had to beg for the life I have once in my entire existence. I had yet again failed to show empathy for one of the most empathetic fictional characters I have ever come across.

But anyway, I digress. Sam wants to trust and achieve normalcy and Dean wants to save. I think this is something that can be said factually, no matter where one is in the series.

(Like can we just talk about late season six-season seven? Sam went _insane_. Literally, insane; he had the Actual Devil in his head as a very real hallucination, he’d been possessed by the Actual Devil beforehand. He knows what it’s like to have the actual walls and foundations of not only your life, but your very _perception of reality_ crumble before your eyes. He had the surety of the idea that what could be seen with his eyes was real, taken away from him – and I had the audacity to judge him on the grounds of his wanting a _break_. Jeez).

I know several people that reacted differently to me here so if you disagree with this, go ahead. But when Sam started treating Dean like shit in season eight for various reasons and in season nine for saving him (dangerous phrasing there), I felt unfathomably betrayed.

The fatal loyalty the brothers hold to each other, it is _everything_ this show is built upon. Almost every season thus far in its broadcasting existence has ended with one brother dying in a hail of metaphorically resonant bullets for the other, or a deal being made, or something of utter moral imperative being thrown aside in order for Sam and Dean to keep each other.

(And I do think of it like that, that they both want to _keep_ the other with them. It’s a very possessive relationship).

So when Sam turned around and began questioning that devotion, and furthermore _refuting_ it, I was beyond distraught. I was inconsolable and fanatic and hysterical, in fact, at the thought of how this would affect Dean. Dean, who has given his _all_ , time and time again to everyone in the series and received… what, exactly, in return? A brother that decides they’re not brothers, on account of the fact that he wanted to die? After all this time, all these years, all the sacrificing and anger and killing, and suddenly what Dean did was _wrong_?

(As a side note, I am speaking from a place of complete bias, so please don’t try to pull me up on that. I am well aware that others have different opinions to me. Furthermore, I’m not trying to argue either party’s side, nor am I trying to defend the characters – they’re _people_ , none of which are perfect, fictional or real. I’m expressing my feelings and how the characters changed and caused that, and expressing my thoughts on the characters themselves).

I think maybe I’m writing this out of penance, for the way I thought and spoke about Sam. Because that line opened my eyes… and hit me over the head with a brick, and then maybe kicked me a little for being so goddamn mean to Sam and not even _trying_ to understand his side.

Because Sam was ready to die.

As fans, we’re understandably attached to the protagonists. Perhaps above all, we don’t want them to clock out on us (which, you know, wouldn’t be a big ask in _any_ other TV series). And with this show, with the bottomless, neurotic way Sam and Dean have fought and bargained and begged to keep the other breathing and with them, we’re probably attached to the idea of them staying alive, and of _them_ needing _each other_ to stay alive, a lot more than the average TV show’s following. This show is, I’ll say it again, built on their desperate relationship.

But, and I’m becoming very fond of this sentence: _Sam was ready to die_.

This means so many things, on so many levels.

One of the things _Supernatural_ makes us crave is reconciliation – we want Sam to kiss that chick and Dean to apologise for being an ass and for them to talk it out, to _listen_ to each other.

This rarely happens.

But in that moment, Sam found his reconciliation. Sam found… not peace, perhaps, but contentment – he saw his and Dean’s relationship, the unhealthy, co-dependent facets of it, he saw the things they have gone through and the tribulations upon tribulations and he _let it go_. He gave himself permission to move on. No one else in this _world_ has had to fight quite his fight, not even Dean, and Sam let himself decide it was his time. This, while initially feeling like betrayal, is actually something that has me in tears for Sam. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, isn’t a break the _least_ the boys deserve?

“Truth is, Sammy, I’m just tired.” Remember that, when Dean had a death sentence on his head in season three, and Sam was doing his all to break it? And Dean was being his usual suicidal self, smirking bastard that puts up a front for the world? And we were mad at him for being so nonchalant, for _accepting his death because he had come to terms with it_?

 _Sam_ is tired. Sam has been fighting and on the run since he was _six months old_. He thought he had found a life with Amelia, in pre-season eight, but Dean came back from Purgatory and ruined that for him.

I do not say that to condemn; there is no right and wrong with how the Winchester brothers are and feel. They’re human. (And if I were beating monsters off my ass day and night in Purgatory and escaped to find out my brother had given up on me, I’d be pissed too. However Dean, bless him, _does_ have a track record of making a surprise appearance just when Sam thinks he can achieve normal, ordinary happiness – happiness he _deserves_ ).

While writing this, I think I’m trying to find a way to reconcile their actions and feelings along with my own, so _I_ can move on, but it’s not happening. I just keep bouncing back and forth from defending Sam to defending Dean to being mad at the both of them to being mad at the world they’re in, for being so never endingly arbitrary in its cruelty and heartlessness.

More than anything, we want- no, we _need_ Sam and Dean to be happy. Not fleetingly, either: we want that stupid laughter Dean found when Sam was covered in glitter from his brawl with evil clowns; we want Sam’s face when Dean drank his home-made eggnog and it was too strong. We want deep-seated happiness for both of them, within themselves _and_ each other.

We want them to be okay. I don’t know what okay is, but I want Sam and Dean to find it.


End file.
